Make It Work Nevada’s Executive Director Erika Washington’s grandfather used to nurture fresh vegetables at their Detroit home garden. Therefore, she knows a thing or two about making healthy food items. The keys to the role she plays at her company are to widely supply healthful food items and educate African-American families about their benefits.
Now, there is a growing climate crisis disproportionately impacting low-income class and non-White communities. Washington stated that deeper details about those issues are more important in this sort of situation. As for Washington, to thrive, it is important to understand climate change- and air quality-related activity as well as what goes into the water and the land.
Issues related to climate change impact tens of thousands of people around the world. Those issues drive the efforts of many Las Vegas organizations that pay attention to climate change. African-American Black-women such as Washington have decided to protect the communities that they belong to. Born on the nationwide Make It Work Campaign, Washington’s organization focuses on non-White women’s issues such as affordable childcare and pay equity.
Washington stated that working with African-American women has made her organization realize that those women have not got the opportunity to discuss climate change or the environment. There has long been White population domination in the climate change fight. Therefore, as for Washington, it is important to include those who are nearest to that issue in the fight for any change.
Many organizations are making a site that looks to raise awareness regarding climate change, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and pollution for fewer energy costs for low-income families and better public health. The site breathefreenv.com will lead users to a PSE report indicating that methods fixed in clean energy have much strength to lessen energy burden and improve Nevada residents’ health, especially that of BIPOC and low-income groups.
The organizations behind the site are CHISPA, Make It Work Nevada, Battle Born Progress, Make The Road Nevada, the Faith Organizing Alliance, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada Action Fund, and Mi Familia Vota Nevada. There are non-White leaders in all of those organizations.
PLAN’s African-American executive director Laura Martin stated that those groups having non-White people in leadership positions is a rare situation. Martin also said that the organizations wished to dive into the conversation around environmental racism as well as craft and support doable and tangible policy ideas.
According to Battle Born Progress’s director Maria-Teresa Liebermann-Parraga, personal experience links the strand between social justice and climate change. After Liebermann-Parraga and her family immigrated from Mexico to the US, she lives around McCarran International Airport. As per the Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy study, the airport is Nevada’s highest emitting source for dangerous air pollutants.
Liebermann-Parraga, too, entered climate justice efforts with her keenness on renewable energy as well as her childhood memories from Mexico shaped by steady pollution of air. When working at Battle Born Progress, Liebermann-Parraga saw how her community members endured climate change repercussions while having little presence in policy change-related discussions.
Liebermann-Parraga stated that many people do not realize that they could take part in demanding potentially beneficial policies from their elected US officials. At the same time, Liebermann-Parraga told policymakers to listen more to climate change-affected people.
Make the Road Nevada’s lead organizer Audrey Peral describes the airport as her neighbor. Peral was surprised by the discovery of the report about the airport’s environmental impacts. Therefore, she fears whether the air quality is harming her teenage son. For a person with no environmental background and who is an undocumented immigrant, it is an immigration viewpoint that drives Peral’s interest in this topic.
As per the report, the disproportionate effects that non-White groups and the low-income class already endure due to climate change became worse during the epidemic period. Therefore, the report suggests adding protections for underserved populations to changes in policy to decarbonize the State of Nevada to avoid future inequity.
The report asserts that low-income families and non-White populations tend to struggle to spend on the fuels and electricity that they use to power vehicles and homes. As per the report, social inequities, including the above-mentioned, affect all economic sectors. Therefore, the report also recommends thinking about those disparities during decarbonization efforts for renewable energy transition plans that distribute advantages more evenly throughout Nevada’s population.
As per a PSE study finding, higher-income US households use more vehicular fuel than their lower-income counterparts. As a substitute for gas-powered vehicles, electronic vehicles cannot become a full solution since these are potentially beyond low-income people’s reach.
The report suggests not only making electric-powered public transportation but also financial incentives from policymakers on electricity-powered passenger vehicles to the low-income class.
The infrastructural bill package worth $1 trillion that cleared the United States Senate in the recent past, budgets a $15 billion investment in electric vehicles. However, that is around $140 billion less than the originally proposed figure, hence the steepest reduction negotiated in that bill’s transportation area.
Martin stated that the right step forward would be to disincentivize new purchases such as EV purchases while making more mass transportation options powered by clean energy.
Martin said that the key is not to have new products to purchase or new ideas but rather considering what suits the quality of the community being sustainable and how to reach that point through problem-solving.